


sometimes in our lives

by xjooheonx (jooheon)



Category: SHINee
Genre: Alternate Universe(s), Dimension hopping?, Gen, jinki's ankle injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 10:34:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12057192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jooheon/pseuds/xjooheonx
Summary: Once, when they were still trainees, Taemin had asked him very seriously:“Do you believe in parallel universes?”And Jinki had responded with equal solemnity,“I wouldn’t definitively rule out their existence.”// or, the one in which Jinki takes a peek at realities not his own and finds that Shinee is Shinee no matter the circumstances.





	sometimes in our lives

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic a year ago or whenever it was that Jinki injured his ankle and there was that interview where he mentioned that other interview where they had jokingly said they'd like to be reborn again as Shinee if it was these members, or something like that. Recent events reminded me that I love this group and I wanna believe that they're a group that will stick together through tough times and be there for each other lmao I'm lame anyways,, enjoy

Once, when they were still trainees, Taemin had asked him very seriously:

“Do you believe in parallel universes?”

And Jinki had responded with equal solemnity,

“I wouldn’t definitively rule out their existence.” When Taemin sighed, Jinki prodded, “Do you?”

“I don’t know if I do, like for _real_ ,” Taemin said, playing with the frayed string of his hoodie. The skin around his fingernails was flaky from the dry winter air. “I just think about it sometimes — like, that there could be an alternate version of me running around in an alternate version of Seoul. Or, like, infinite alternate versions of me. In infinite alternate Seouls.”

“Infinite Lee Taemins,” Jinki giggled, “how terrifying.”

Taemin laughed too. Then he got pensive again. “But sometimes I just think about it — out of all the infinite Taemins, how many are also training to become idols? How many are just regular students? Is there an alternate universe where I have a girlfriend?”

Jinki had laughed again, and said _probably not_ , and Taemin had whacked him on the shoulder playfully, and then they had gone back down to join the others for practice.

It was such a fleeting conversation, but something about it stuck with him. He thought of it a couple months later, in the fallout of a particularly nasty confrontation between Minho and Kibum. It had started over something trivial, as usual. Minho was mad, blustery and loud, but Kibum was furious, white-hot and laser-focused. One thing that Jinki had learned by then was that Kibum could get very mean very quickly, and so he always endeavored to stay on Kibum’s good side. Minho was never so cautious.

“Why are you even here, then?” Minho yelled. He seemed to take up all the air in the tiny bedroom. Jinki cowered in the doorway. This was where a manager was supposed to come in and diffuse the situation, but the bedroom door across the hall remained shut. “If that’s what you think, then why are you here?”

“I wish I wasn’t,” Kibum shot back, eyes narrowed, venomous. “If I’d known I’d be stuck with someone like you — fuck, I might as well have stayed in fucking Daegu if I’d known this was how it was going to be.”

“Go back to Daegu, then.” Minho crossed his arms, defiant. “If you can’t handle it here, go home already.”

“ _You_ should be the one to go home,” Kibum said derisively, “I don’t _get_ why you’re even here, honestly, you can’t sing, can’t dance, can’t even rap — ”

“Stop,” Jinki said. His voice was wavering, and he realized belatedly that he’d started crying. Minho and Kibum both visibly flinched. “Please stop, Kibum. Both of you.”

“Don’t cry,” Minho said. “Hyung, we didn’t mean to upset you. Don’t cry.”

Kibum said nothing, just stood there looking stricken. Later, when it was just the two of them, Jinki asked him:

“Do you really wish you weren’t here?”

Kibum shrugged. “I said that because I was pissed at Minho. I don’t know.”

“But did you mean it?”

“I don’t _know_ ,” Kibum huffed. “Ask me again after we debut.”

 

 

 

  
“I love you more than my own life,” Minho said very seriously the first time they ever got drunk together. Jinki was nineteen and scared to death they’d be caught, but they were between promotions and the managers had gone out a while ago, so he’d relented in the end. He hadn’t known that Minho would get so… emotional. “I mean it. I love you guys so much.”

“We get it,” Taemin said. He was red in the face, too red. Jinki reached for the bottle so they’d stop drinking, but it was already empty.

“You _don’t_ get it,” Minho insisted. “I _fucking love you guys_.”

Jinki’s head had begun to spin, but in a gentle, pleasant way. “We love you too, Minho,” he promised.

“I love you, too,” Minho slurred. “I really —” a loud hiccup “— I really love you guys. Where’s — Jonghyun? And Kibum? I need to tell him I love him.”

Jonghyun and Kibum had left shortly after the managers, to see a movie, they’d said.

“They already know,” Taemin said. “That you love them.”

They had never said that they loved each other, but it was probably true, Jinki thought. A year and a half in and he couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else. There was a bond, a trust, that ran steady under everything they did together, every second of every day, and running with it was an emotion that had no name, but the closest thing, probably, was love, Jinki thought.

Despite Taemin’s reassurances, Minho ended up calling Kibum.

“We just got out of the movie. What’s up?” came Kibum’s voice, faint through the phone.

“I love you, Kim Kibum,” Minho said. The words were heavy, sluggish, and a little too loud. “Give Jonghyun-hyung a hug from me because I love him too.”

“My God,” Kibum said, appalled. Taemin and Jinki both snickered.

“It’s like, you can be so _awful_ sometimes but you’re such a _great person_ and I wouldn’t trade you for _anything_ because I really, _really_ love you. I really do.”

“Really,” Kibum said dryly. “You’re drunk, aren’t you. I’m hanging up.”

“Don’t!” Minho shrieked. “Kibummie!”

“I’m hanging up,” Kibum repeated, and then a little more quietly, “You too, you freak.”

 

 

 

  
Sometimes, Jinki would have the nagging thought that Jonghyun was a little too cool to be his friend — that if not for Shinee, they might never have even spoken to each other. Even from the start, Jonghyun had been skinny and weird but in a rock band, which counted for something. Meanwhile Jinki was always just weird. Their high school selves _might_ have gelled without the link of traineeship, but Jonghyun really only got cooler as the years went on, and Jinki had to actively work to keep himself from getting lamer.

Rock bottom was maybe when Jonghyun said to him, not in a mean way or anything, “Hyung, this is the sixth night in a row you’ve passed out drunk on the couch alone like this.”

What made it worse was that five of those six nights Jonghyun had only found him passed out on the couch because he’d been coming home late at night from going on dates, or hanging out with friends, or whatever cool guy stuff it was he got up to. Sometimes, Jinki despaired that there was a gap between them he’d never be able to close, that Jonghyun was already way out of his friend league, that their relationship was born out of nothing more than mere convenience.

Other times, Jonghyun’d be sitting on the floor wearing ratty boxers and a pink Doraemon T-shirt, smartphone in hand, howling with laughter over Attack on Titan memes, and Jinki would think actually, maybe _he_ was the normal one.

Now, as Jonghyun was gently nudging him to migrate from the living room to his own bed, he just sighed. He could smell the soju on his own breath.

“ _Two bottles_?” Jonghyun was saying incredulously. “Hyung.”

“Didn’t you know?” Jinki says, concentrating very hard on not sounding drunk. “Sadness absorbs alcohol. I could keep drinking forever.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Jonghyun said, hoisting him up by the armpits, “you’d die.”

“Well, there’s that, I guess,” Jinki mumbled. He allowed himself to be guided into the bedroom, deposited into his bed. Jonghyun pulled the covers up over him and then paused, considering for a moment.

“Are you gonna be okay like this?”

Jinki flopped his arms weakly once, the closest approximation of a shrug that he could manage at the moment. “I think I’ll be fine,” he said tiredly, but he meant it. “I think I’ll be okay.”

 

 

 

 

Spraining his ankle hurt like a bitch, in more ways than one. It was physically excruciating for a short while, but the emotional toll was enduring: for two days straight he couldn’t seem to get his chest to loosen, his heart to unclench.

“You’re not a fuck-up,” Kibum said quietly, casually.

“I never said I was.”

“But you were thinking it,” Kibum said. “Stop with the self-blame. It’s not a good look on you.”

Jinki couldn’t help but smile. At some point over the years, Kibum’s verging-on-abrasive honesty had become a comfort in and of itself. Over small stuff, he’d sometimes get doting and syrupy-sweet, but times like now, he cut to the chase, didn’t coddle. Kibum had an incredible realness about him that Jinki had always admired.

And besides, there was enough coddling from the other three to more than make up for it. From Minho alone, even. Jinki spent the night after his second hospital visit not only blissed out on painkillers, but full of delicious takeout and surrounded by all the material comforts the members and managers thought he’d need.

“If you, like, want anything in the middle of the night just wake me up,” Minho told him. “And I’ll get it so you don’t have to get up.”

“I’m not an invalid, you know,” Jinki said, settling down into his memory foam pillow. A scented dehumidifier hummed almost imperceptibly on the bedside table. How that was supposed to help his ankle was beyond him, but it did smell nice.

Minho glared at him sternly. “It’s not good for you to walk on that leg, hyung. Just wake me up if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay,” Jinki said mildly.

Maybe it was the meds, or maybe it was the dehumidifier and the pleasant aroma of lavender, but Jinki fell asleep in what felt like a matter of seconds. When he woke up, things were different. The dehumidifier was gone. Minho was gone, his bed rumpled like he’d woken up in a rush. Most intriguingly, Jinki’s ankle cast was gone.

Tentatively, he stood up and took a few steps. There was no pain — it was like he’d never been injured at all.

“Guys!” he yelled, bounding into the living room, where Minho, Jonghyun, and Kibum were sitting in a little circle. “My ankle!”

Their heads shot up in unison to stare at him.

“Yours too?” Kibum said, looking pained. “Great. Fuck, that’s just fucking perfect.”

“I thought you’d be happy,” Jinki said, crestfallen and a little confused.

“What happened to your ankle, hyung?” Jonghyun asked.

“It healed overnight,” Jinki said. “Don’t ask me how, but — ”

“Hyung,” Minho said, eyes wide. “When did you even hurt your ankle?”

Jinki blinked. “I — what do you mean? You were all there. It happened on stage.”

The other three exchanged glances. Then Kibum sighed.

“You must have dreamed it was you,” he said. “Or maybe you two really are empathically linked.”

“Huh?”

“Hyung,” Minho said patiently. “ _Taemin_ is the one who fell, remember?”

A long ten seconds passed as Jinki tried to process that. He racked his memory, but no matter which way he sliced it, _he’d_ been the one to go down, the one to hobble, teeth gritted, off stage afterwards, the one to insist on finishing the show hobbling precariously on an ankle that felt like it was on fire. Taemin had been there, wholly uninjured, asking Jinki if he could even walk.

Jinki looked around at the other three, who were waiting expectantly for him to say something. They looked deadly serious, so either this was an impressively in-depth practical joke of some sort or they were having a mass hallucination. Or _Jinki_ was the one hallucinating. He decided to just go along with it.

“Right,” he said. “Taemin. Of course.”

“Yes,” Jonghyun said, looking relieved.

“Although it is a small miracle we’ve gone eight years without you ever hurting yourself,” Kibum added.

“We have?”

“Hyung, are you okay?” Minho said. “Do you have a fever or something? You seem sort of out of it.”

“No, I’m fine,” Jinki said. “Apparently. I’m just — groggy from waking up, that’s all.”

They didn’t seem convinced.

“Anyway, I, uh. I was just gonna, um, go talk to Taemin actually,” Jinki said. “Is he in his room?”

“I think he wants to be alone,” Jonghyun said. “You know how he gets when he’s injured.”

Jinki thought back on the few times Taemin had been injured. “So, hungry and bored. I’ll bring him some toast.”

The bedroom smelled like lavender. It was dim, the curtains drawn, with a little square of blue light emanating from Taemin’s cell phone, illuminating his face. He looked up when Jinki walked in, then rolled over in the bed to face the wall. Jinki could see the shape of the small cast through the comforter.

“I’m sleeping,” Taemin said.

“I might be, too,” Jinki said. He set the plate of toast down next to the dehumidifier. “This morning has been super weird so far.”

“How’s that?” Taemin rolled over to grab the toast, took a bite, then grudgingly sat up. Jinki sat down on the bed next to him.

“I feel like everyone’s in on some elaborate prank, I just can’t figure out why. Or how my ankle magically got better.”

“Your ankle is fine, though,” Taemin said through a mouthful of crumbs.

“Yeah,” Jinki said. “Maybe I’m just crazy.”

“Well, we knew _that_ already,” Taemin said matter-of-factly.

“Mm,” Jinki said with a smile.

Taemin finished the toast in silence, and then wiped his mouth and said, “Hyung, thanks for talking with me last night.”

They hadn’t talked last night about anything other than Overwatch and whether or not Jinki should switch to a different aftershave. But he nodded anyway, played along. “Of course.”

“And I’m sorry I was being a dick,” Taemin continued. “But I’ve been thinking about it. And you’re right, I have been selfish. This body doesn’t only belong to me anymore. I’ve just never wanted to accept that fact.”

“Did I say that?” Jinki said, a little horrified.

“What you said was to let other people in.” Taemin looked down at his hands, fingers curling and uncurling in his lap. “You said that other people caring and worrying about me wasn’t a bad thing.”

“Well, I stand by that,” Jinki said, patting Taemin awkwardly on the knee. “Your body is your own, but I’m allowed to want you to be healthy. Even if that’s my own selfishness.”

“I,” Taemin began. He looked up at the ceiling. “I just hate being injured and sick all the time. It just fucking sucks.”

That struck a chord. It wasn’t like Jinki was _always_ injured and sick, but it did feel like he was constantly battling to maintain passable health. And when he lost that battle — when he had to miss promotions and concerts and events — it made him resentful and frustrated and sad and weak. For a moment he forgot that Taemin, the Taemin he knew, was rarely injured.

“Yeah,” he said softly, “it does suck. It’s the worst. I’m here for you. You know that right? That if you need anything, you can just ask.”

“Thanks,” Taemin said. He gave a small smile. “How about another piece of toast, then?”  

“Sure,” Jinki said. He picked up the plate and got to his feet. “Like I said, anything.”

As he made his way to the bedroom door, he could hear the rustle of the comforter as Taemin shifted on the bed, and from the living room there was still the low murmur of conversation between the other three. But the moment he was over the threshold and into the hallway, things were dead silent. His hands were empty. He whipped his head around, and Taemin was nowhere to be seen.

Jinki swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat.

“Hello?” he called cautiously.

More silence.

“I do not appreciate these shenanigans,” Jinki said loudly. There was no way they weren’t pranking him. “For the record, I am not actually freaking out so you do _not_ win.”

He went into the living room and started peering into every nook and cranny, opening drawers, uprooting couch cushions. If he could just find the hidden camera, they would _have_ to give up the game, and then things could go back to normal. Maybe the ankle sprain itself was the prank — though it had felt plenty real at the time — and now they wanted him to think he was crazy. Well, he wasn’t crazy. He was the most sane member of the entire. Damn. Group.

“Hyung, what the fuck are you doing?”

Minho and Taemin were standing in the hallway looking concerned. Actually Minho looked downright pissed. Jinki realized how he looked, crouched amidst the scattered couch cushions and other various debris, shaking the Xbox upside down.

“I was just looking for the hidden camera,” he said with as much dignity as he could muster.

“The hidden camera,” Taemin repeated flatly. He tapped his foot (no trace of an injury that Jinki could see) impatiently.

“I can’t believe you can be so flippant at a time like this,” Minho said. “We’ve been losing our damn minds, you know. Kibum is _so_ fucking stressed out, and you’re just,” he gestured helplessly, “making a pillow fort or something?”

“I wasn’t,” Jinki said weakly. Minho was glaring daggers at him, and somehow this was completely different from how they’d all acted just minutes earlier. They’d questioned his sanity, which was sort of run of the mill at this point. But now, Minho seemed really and truly mad, like Jinki had crossed a line.

At that moment, Jinki’s phone buzzed. He hadn’t even realized that it was in the pocket of his sweatpants, but he took it out and saw a new message from Jonghyun.

“They’re not letting Jonghyun in the meeting,” he read aloud, trying his best to sound like he knew what that meant.

Minho swore.

“Of course they’re not,” Taemin said. “I told him they wouldn’t. The managers told him they wouldn’t. Why would they let him in and not the rest of us?”

Another new message.

“He’ll be back here in thirty minutes,” Jinki announced. “And he says not to talk about anything without him.”

“Fine,” Minho said shortly. “I’ll be in my room.”

Taemin trailed after him, leaving Jinki to clean up the mess he’d made of the living room. As it turned out, that only took about eight minutes, leaving him twenty-two minutes to dick around on his phone.

And that, as it turned out, was what it took to finally convince Jinki that this was something bigger than a petty prank for a hidden camera. Because this was his phone — same case, same scratch on the side, same passcode and everything — but the messaging exchanges with his friends, family, and the members were completely unfamiliar. The outgoing messages were all unquestionably stamped with his typing quirks and sense of humor, so he had to have written them — he just had absolutely no memory of doing so.

For the first time in a long time, he thought back to Taemin’s words:

_Do you believe in parallel universes?_

He hadn’t written those messages, but this universe’s Jinki had. And this universe’s Jinki had sent eighteen messages in the past three hours to this universe’s Kibum, which all sat there unread.

 **6:12** _are you gonna be okay alone?_  
**6:12** _we can meet you at the office if you want_  
**6:13** _minho, taem and jjong are going now, i’m gonna stay here and try to get ahold of the lawyer team_  
**6:21** _no one’s answering their phones_  
**6:40** _you can’t talk right now and i get that, but i just wanna let you know we’re all doing everything we can on our end. so don’t feel like you’re in there on your own, even if we can’t be in the room with you_  
**6:42** _you’re so precious to me and to all of us kibum and you’re not alone and we’re gonna fight this_  
**7:09** _mr. jang (the lawyer) called me back we can set up a meeting sometime this week to go over the contract_  
**7:10** _just call me when you get these messages_  
**7:47** _so minho taem and jjong got turned away apparently. they probably messaged you._  
**7:47** _minho and taem are coming back but jjong said he would keep trying to get in_  
**7:54** _you don’t have to call me but just come straight back to the dorm when you get out so we can all talk_  
**8:29** _you know we’ll all quit and sue the shit out of them in solidarity if that’s what it takes_  
**8:29** _i gotta run that by the others but i know they’ll agree_  
**8:30** _if they really do try to fire you that’ll be the height of discrimination_  
**8:30** _and we’re not going to let it happen. period._  
**8:30** _this isn’t how it ends._  
**8:46** _just get home safe_  
**8:49** _call me, kibum_

As he read through them, he gained a sense, somehow, for how things were. Kibum was in trouble — which meant they were all in trouble. It rose in him then: a current of protectiveness, a need to be as strong for Kibum as Kibum had always been for him, for all of them. Kibum with his sass and his sharp-edged malice, Kibum who was independent and selfish but fiercely loyal, who had said to Jinki on two separate occasions, “I would literally commit murder for you,” which was basically his version of “I love you.”  

From down the hallway, there came the sound a key scraping in the lock: Jonghyun was home.

“Everyone let’s talk,” he yelled as soon as he walked in the door. He stormed down the hallway, stood fuming in the living room. “We have to talk about this. I’m so fucking mad. We have to figure something out.”

Jonghyun looked exactly like Jinki felt at that moment: livid and restless, furious with his own helplessness. When Minho and Taemin materialized behind him, he saw the same look of frustration mirrored on their faces.

“We will figure it out,” Jinki said. He sounded less reassuring than he would have liked.

“Of course we will,” Jonghyun said feverishly. “I’m not — we are not losing Kibum. We just aren’t.”

As one, the other three nodded.

And then, Jinki felt reality begin to warp and fold around him, like something cold sliding down his back, like a current of electricity dancing along his skin. It was a colorless feeling, but unpleasantly disorienting. He blinked for what felt like an eternity, and when he opened his eyes he wasn’t in the living room anymore, wasn’t in the dorm at all. He was in a hospital room, and Minho was lying on a sterile white bed with a sterile white bandage around his head and ugly, fresh bruising all along his cheek and jaw, and Kibum was sitting there with his back to Jinki, looking hunched and small, clutching Minho’s hand in his so hard the unmoving fingers were white and bloodless.

 _What happened?_ wasn’t the right question. _Everything’s gonna be okay_ felt off too, cheap and dishonest. He didn’t know if everything _would_ be okay. He didn’t know much about anything at the moment, so maybe words could wait until later. For the moment, he laid his hand gently on Kibum’s shoulder and hoped that that was enough.

When Kibum spoke, after a long while, his voice was rough.

“I should go,” he said.

It wasn’t what Jinki was expecting. “Why?”

“I want him to wake up, but I don’t think I can be here when he does,” Kibum said.

“Why not?” Jinki asked cautiously.

“Why do you _want_ to be here?” Kibum demanded. “Don’t you feel guilty?”

 _Should I?_ Jinki knew better than to say it aloud.

“This isn’t your fault or mine,” Jinki said. A gamble. He still had no idea how Minho had ended up like this.

“I know that, and I still feel like shit,” Kibum said. He spun around abruptly, and Jinki saw that, beneath red puffy eyes, his cheek had a bandage on it as well, and his lower lip was swollen with a raw scrape. “You and I are fine. So why was Minho… only Minho…”

 _A car crash_ , Jinki thought faintly. He looked down at himself covertly, and found a thick, splotchy bruise on his left forearm. Kibum was right: it was nothing compared to Minho’s injuries.

“I hate him sometimes,” Kibum continued. “I can’t fucking stand him sometimes. But this is so… I’ve never been this scared. And don’t you dare tell him I said that.” He sighed. “I just want to go home, I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“We can go,” Jinki said. “I’m gonna tell him, though.”

“ _Don’t_.”

“Fine,” Jinki said. “We’ll come back when he’s awake, and you can say it to him yourself.”

Kibum glared. “People think you’re the nice one, but you’re actually such a bully.”

Jinki laughed. He knew Kibum would do it anyway, whether he forced him to or not. And he knew how it would be: Minho teasing in that deep voice, “Did you cry for me?” and Kibum slapping him on the arm a little too forcefully and threatening to beat the crap out of Minho if he ever got hurt again. It would make Minho smile that easy smile, because much as he loved things to be straightforward, he loved Kibum and his evasions just as much.

It was then that Minho began to stir.

“Oh, fuck,” Kibum said.

“Should we call a nurse?” Jinki said.

“Probably.”

But they didn’t. Minho blinked a few times, slowly taking in his surroundings, and then registered their faces and tried to smile, before grimacing in apparent pain. Jinki heard Kibum inhale a sharp breath.

“Everything hurts,” Minho commented mildly. “Hi, guys. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Oh, fuck,” Kibum said again, and then he was sniffling again and knuckling at his eyes, pushing back the tears. “Choi Minho you’re an insufferable piece of shit and I’m only saying this once so don’t ask me to repeat it because I won’t. You’re a dear friend to me and I’m so fucking glad you’re awake and you’re going to be fine. I’m going home now. Jinki, let’s go.”

“We’ll be back,” Jinki promised as Kibum dragged him away by the sleeve. “We’ll bring the others.”

“Bring me some video games,” Minho said. “Love you, hyung.”

“I’m going to die of embarrassment,” Kibum muttered, as he walked out the door.

“I love you, too,” Minho called, “you freak.”

When reality twisted, he was ready for it. He was in a big hotel room now, with the members, the managers, some tour staff, some dancers, all of them holding drinks and toasting to a successful show.

“Who says we don’t hold good after-parties!” Minho roared, clearly already drunk.

“You mean after-after-after parties,” Taemin corrected, also very drunk.

Judging by all the empty bottles next to him, Jinki was drunk, too. He felt clear-headed though, so maybe not. Maybe dimension-hopping canceled out the effects of alcohol. Across the room, Kibum was entertaining a shrieking gaggle of girls, and Jonghyun was playing a drinking game with a couple of backup dancers. As Jinki watched, Jonghyun gave a start, fished his phone out of his pocket, and frowned at the screen. Then he got up and retreated to the quiet of the bathroom to answer it, passing Jinki on the way.

When he emerged, his face had lost all its color.

“What’s wrong?” someone asked him.

“My sister,” Jonghyun said faintly. “She’s sick, it’s bad, and I — I have to go home.”

Taemin had found his way to Jonghyun’s side. “What does she have?”

“They don’t know,” Jonghyun said. “She went to the hospital for a cough last week, but now they’re saying they can’t diagnose it, and she keeps getting worse, and I — ” He broke off, covered his eyes.

“You can’t go home,” said one of the managers. The raucous clamor of the party had begun to die down as people noticed how distraught Jonghyun was. “Not until after tomorrow night’s show.”

“I have to!” Jonghyun yelled. “It’s my _sister_!”

“It’s only one more night,” the manager said.

“Why don’t we move the party to another room,” Kibum said loudly. “Everyone, let’s move it over to the other suite.”

People began to file out the door, leaving a trail of empty cans and bottles in their wake. Jinki stayed behind — the suitcases tucked behind the beds told him this was his and Jonghyun’s room anyway — and so did the members, the managers, and one of the tour coordinators.

“You have an _obligation_ ,” someone was saying.

“His sister is sick,” Minho shot back in reply, still red in the face but dead serious now. “If she dies and he’s here, then what are you gonna say?”

“She isn’t going to die.”

“I should be there,” Jonghyun said. “I have to be.”

“Don’t be selfish,” the manager said. “Think about what’s best for the group.”

“Maybe the group should think about what’s best for him,” Kibum snapped. “Book a flight, hyung.”

“The fans,” the manager began angrily.

“Will understand,” Kibum said. “They will, they always do.”

The argument stretched on, but Jonghyun had sat down on the bed and was just crying quietly. Taemin, normally so bad at consoling, went to sit next to him. Maybe being drunk lent him a new capacity for empathy, or maybe he just saw the raw pain in Jonghyun’s slumped form. He wrapped one slender arm around Jonghyun’s shoulders, let him lean in and cry against his bony chest.

“Don’t cry,” Jinki heard Taemin say softly. He was smiling faintly, as he often did in times like these; like he was incapable of taking it seriously, like he didn’t really know how. But still, he didn’t let go of Jonghyun. “Don’t cry, we’re here.”

Kibum was raising his voice, Minho too, and the tour coordinator was speaking urgently on the phone, and the managers were drunk and all of them were drunk. But Jonghyun continued to rock slowly in Taemin’s arms as Taemin repeated gently, almost mindlessly, “We’re here, it’s okay, don’t cry, we’re here.”

 

 

 

 

Jinki woke up to the scent of lavender. His ankle cast was tangled in the sheets of his bed, and his phone, plugged in on the nightstand, was blinking with several new messages. Messages of support from his friends, and one from his mother asking if he was getting enough rest. One from Taemin that read simply, _you smell_.

All in all, a blissfully normal morning.

From down the hall drifted the sound of voices, and the smell of rice cooking. When Jinki hobbled into the kitchen, it was to Minho glaring balefully as Kibum chewed him out for taking his leftovers from the fridge. Jonghyun sat half-awake at the table holding a cup of instant noodles. Taemin was in the living room on his phone.

“I love you all, forever and always,” Jinki announced. “Don’t any of you ever forget it.”

Jonghyun cocked an eyebrow. “Okay? Love you too, but what prompted this?”

“He’s high on pain meds,” Kibum said airily. “Eat something, you shouldn’t be taking those on an empty stomach.”

Minho’s frown smoothed out. “Did you sleep okay, hyung?”

“I slept fine,” Jinki said. He went over to the living room, plopped onto the couch beside Taemin.

“You smell,” Taemin said absently. A throwaway comment, meaningless words by which Taemin meant, _good morning_. It was so juvenile and familiar, Jinki couldn’t help but reach over to ruffle his hair.

“Thank you, Taemin,” he said happily.

Taemin wrinkled his nose. “Weirdo. What’s up with you this morning?”

Back in the kitchen, Kibum and Minho had resumed their argument. Jonghyun was slurping down the last of his noodles. The cast around Jinki’s ankle really did kind of smell, but the pain of it had ebbed just a little. His smile was light.

“Taemin,” he said, grinning. “Do you believe in parallel universes?”

**Author's Note:**

> Because I realize in retrospect that the crisis in the second alternate reality is a bit ambiguous, I'll just spell it out here: Kibum has been outed as gay and they're afraid he'll be kicked out of the group. I feel like this used to be a somewhat common trope for Key specifically back in the day, lol?


End file.
